1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing device, an image processing method, and an image processing program, more particularly to an image processing device, an image processing method, and an image processing program which extract a facial portion of an image in which a character is photographed, so that the facial portion is synthesized on a prescribed position of a template.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, various techniques are developed in order to easily synthesize a facial image, which is an image of a facial portion of a character image, into a background image or a costume image. For example, in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 10-222649, first, while designating two points as reference for synthesis in a background image or a costume image, two points as reference for synthesizing a facial image are designated so that a hair area in the facial image and an inside area of profile of the facial image are used for synthesis. Next, the two points as the reference for synthesizing the facial image are designated so that a midpoint of line segment connecting the two points is disposed onto a jaw tip while length of the line segment is a breadth of the face, on the horizontal line passing through the jaw tip. Then, a portrait image is generated by mapping the areas used in synthesizing the facial image so that the two points designated on the facial image the two points designated on the background image or the like, overlap one another.
However, in the foregoing Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 10-222649, in the case in which a so-called “backdrop” type template image is adopted as the background image or costume to insert a facial image of a separately photographed character into the blank portion formed by carving out the facial portion of a human character, it is highly likely that the eyes or mouth of the facial image may stick out from the blank portion with the mapping in which the two points designated with respect to the jaw tip are used as the synthetic reference, as described above.